"I am by birth a free Commoner of England, and am thereby intailed or intituled unto an equall priviledge with your selfe, or the greatest men in England, unto the freedome and liberty of the Lawes of England."
William Thompson, 14. of December, 1647

Monday, 17 December 2007

The Guardian's Comment is Free begs the question 'what is the collective noun for tossers?" Just as soon as Polly Toynbee saunters off, along comes Alex Hilton to make up the numbers, relating a conversation with a young tory, whose youth and enthusiasm, Alex thinks, will correspond sharply with his own urbane maturity. But there's more than mere political difference to contrast. Alex is good. The youngster is evil.

Alex expounds his version of socialist history, where horny handed miners fight for gay liberation and dockers struggle for the right to diversity training. He makes no attempt to defend his chosen ideology on economic grounds, and is happy to concede in these terms it doesn't work, but he needs to find a little clear water between himself and his callow adversary, so he makes the latter a blind dogmatist - unlike dear Alex, who is able to discern that there are limits to everything, including free markets.

At one point Alex wants to physically assault the young chap, but holds back, because its not the done thing at a Westminster schmoozathon. Maybe this is how he thinks the working classes act, but he comes over like a public school bully mistreating a junior.

In the end, stripped of its economic policy, with its history utterly falsified, Alex grasps for emotive idealism - his socialism is 'a refusal to accept there is a human scrapheap'. Now, if Alex was working with abandoned kids, or in prison reeducation, you could understand such a sentiment, but what does he do? He hangs around Westminster drinks parties trying to ingratiate himself with the parasite politicians, hoping to get a leg up onto the gravy train, a bourgeouis, free-loading lounge lizard - the very epitome of who the original Labour party saw as the enemy.

Bringing things to a conclusion, Alex tells us: "Politics is a matter of good and evil. This is why I abhor the oxymoron of Christian conservatism," however, if Alex's views are anything to go by, the oxymoron is modern socialism.